Ron Paul
is a member of
the U.S. Congress (R) representing the 14th District of Texas.
These Texas Straight Talks were first published on
August 3rd and July
20th.

OPINION

Healthcare Plan Based on Economic Fantasy

by Rep. Ron Paul, MD

As the healthcare debate rages on, there is one reality that even
the proponents of this hostile takeover of healthcare by government
cannot ignore—and that is money. The government simply does not have
the money for a new, expansive, public healthcare plan. The country
is in a deep recession that will deepen even further with the coming
collapse of the commercial real estate market. The last thing we
need is for government to increase and expand taxes to pay for
another damaging, wasteful program.

Foreigners are becoming less enthusiastic about buying our debt, and
creating another open-ended welfare program when we cannot pay for what is
already in place, will not help. Champions of socialized medicine want to tax
the rich, tax businesses that already cannot afford to provide health plans to
employees, and tax people who don't want to participate in the government's
scheme by buying an approved healthcare plan. Presumably, all these taxes are to
induce compliance. This is not freedom, nor will it improve healthcare.

There are limits to how much government can tax before it kills the
host. Even worse, when government attempts to subsidize prices, it has the net
effect of inflating them instead. The economic reality is that you cannot
distort natural market pressures without unintended consequences. Market forces
would drive prices down. Government meddling negates these pressures, adds
regulatory compliance costs and layers of bureaucracy, and in the end, drives
prices up.

The non-partisan CBO estimates that the healthcare plan will cost
almost a trillion dollars over the next ten years. But government crystal balls
always massively underestimate costs. It is not hard to imagine the final cost
being two or three times the estimates, even though the estimates are bad enough.

It is still surreal that in a free country we are talking only about
HOW government should fix healthcare, rather than WHY government should fix
healthcare. This should be between doctors and patients. But this has been the
discussion since the 60's and the inception of Medicare and Medicaid, when
government first began intervening to keep costs down and make sure everyone had
access. The result of Medicaid/Medicare price controls and regulatory burden has
been to drive more doctors out of the system—making it more difficult for the
poor and the elderly to receive quality care! Seemingly, there are no failed
government programs, only underfunded ones. If we refuse to acknowledge common
sense economics, the prescription will always be the same: more government.

Make no mistake, government control and micromanagement of
healthcare will hurt, not help healthcare in this country. However, if for a
moment, we allowed the assumption that it really would accomplish all they
claim, paying for it would still plunge the country into poverty. This solves
nothing. The government, like any household struggling with bills to pay, should
prioritize its budget. If the administration is serious about supporting
healthcare without contributing to our skyrocketing deficits, they should
fulfill promises to reduce our overseas commitments and use some of those
savings to take care of Americans at home instead of killing foreigners abroad.

The leadership in Washington persists in a fantasy world of
unlimited money to spend on unlimited programs and wars to garner unlimited
control. But there is a fast-approaching limit to our ability to borrow, steal,
and print. Acknowledging this reality is not mean-spirited or cruel. On the
contrary, it could be the only thing that saves us from complete and total
economic meltdown.

"Universal Healthcare never quite works out
the way the people are led to believe before implementing it. As
bureaucrats take over medicine, costs go up and quality goes down
because doctors spend more and more of their time on paperwork and
less time helping patients."

Healthcare is a Good, Not a Right

Political philosopher Richard Weaver famously and correctly
stated that ideas have consequences. Take for example ideas
about rights versus goods. Natural law states that people
have rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. A
good is something you work for and earn. It might be a need,
like food, but more "goods" seem to be becoming "rights" in
our culture, and this has troubling consequences. It might
seem harmless enough to decide that people have a right to
things like education, employment, housing or healthcare.
But if we look a little further into the consequences, we
can see that the workings of the community and economy are
thrown wildly off balance when people accept those ideas.

First of all, other people must pay for things like
healthcare. Those people have bills to pay and families to
support, just as you do. If there is a "right" to healthcare,
you must force the providers of those goods, or others, to
serve you.

Obviously, if healthcare providers were suddenly considered
outright slaves to healthcare consumers, our medical schools
would quickly empty. As the government continues to convince
us that healthcare is a right instead of a good, it also
very generously agrees to step in as middle man. Politicians
can be very good at making it sound as if healthcare will be
free for everybody. Nothing could be further from the truth.
The administration doesn't want you to think too much about
how hospitals will be funded, or how you will somehow get
something for nothing in the healthcare arena. We are asked
to just trust the politicians. Somehow it will all work out.

Universal Healthcare never quite works out the way the
people are led to believe before implementing it. Citizens
in countries with nationalized healthcare never would have
accepted this system had they known upfront about the
rationing of care and the long lines.

As bureaucrats take over medicine, costs go up and quality
goes down because doctors spend more and more of their time
on paperwork and less time helping patients. As costs
skyrocket, as they always do when inefficient bureaucrats
take the reins, government will need to confiscate more and
more money from an already foundering economy to somehow pay
the bills. As we have seen many times, the more money and
power that government has, the more power it will abuse. The
frightening aspect of all this is that cutting costs, which
they will inevitably do, could very well mean denying vital
services. And since participation will be mandatory, no
legal alternatives will be available.

The government will be paying the bills, forcing doctors and
hospitals to dance more and more to the government's tune.
Having to subject our health to this bureaucratic insanity
and mismanagement is possibly the biggest danger we face.
The great irony is that in turning the good of healthcare
into a right, your life and liberty are put in jeopardy.

Instead of further removing healthcare from the market, we
should return to a true free market in healthcare, one that
empowers individuals, not bureaucrats, with control of
healthcare dollars. My bill HR 1495 the Comprehensive
Healthcare Reform Act provides tax credits and medical
savings accounts designed to do just that.